HTC sues Apple in the UK Smartphone maker HTC is taking rival Apple to court in the UK just weeks after losing a preliminary ruling over two patent violations in the US. The latest case was filed at the High Court on 29 July according to reports on Bloomberg, but the exact nature of the litigation in HTC Europe Co v Apple Inc was not specified. …
I have a folding BT keyboard, with a control key - but the HTC senseUI conflicted with the latest BT drivers, so it can't support HID.
Installed cyanogenmod (other firmwares exist) and it's lovely. I have a very small laptop.
Icon? I even get an Escape key (even if it does require two buttons to be pushed)
Unlike Apple, Microsoft licensed its relevant patent portfolio to HTC. Just got its "legal" pound of flesh, and extended its "legal protection".
(As indeed it should have, as HTC has made most WinMob devices worth their salt, along with the current crop of Win7 phones).
But the money aside, Apple trying to patent "grid of icons" thing is kind of low. There needs to be a higher threshold for a non-obvious claim to be granted.
Also, software patents should expire more quickly than mechanical ones like, say, in two years. Two years is a lot of time in softwareland. It is more than enough to exploit the headstart, and short enough to drive innovation and not stifle it. Designers and manufacturers should make the money, not the lawyers.
On a sidenote: I wonder how the web would be, if for instance Opera had the "foresight" to patent the, say, tabbed browsing?
"Am I missing something ? - I SSH into my Linux systems all the time without a control key."
if you use gnu screen, a ctrl key is indispensable.
the milestone has a decent enough screen resolution and the keypad is acceptable apart from the hideous top row. but some key combinations don't work when using connect bot. i find it easier to connect and work using putty from my e71.
You can install alternate touch keyboards that have CTRL char panes in them which, if you're not doing lots and lots of SSH may well suffice.
One keyboard is 'Full Keyboard' by Haily Lin
If you can borrow a pal's Android phone to try it then you may find it's enough which gives you more phone options like Galaxy Sii and Sensation
perhaps patent litigation is the new career of choice. With all the corps suing each other for patents of dubious merit instead of developing products there will be a never ending flow of money into law.
Hope the lawyers dont book 6 minute meetings or IBM will sue them for that too...
Before everyone gets on their anti-apple high horses let's all remember that all these tech co's ate as bad as each other when it comes to patent trolling, and at least they are not obvious patent squatters like some.
Let's also not forget that it was HTC who was a gleeful partner of M$ who allegedly helped them rip off most of Sendo's ip when the first iteration of win
Mob came out.
Indeed one could argue that the Sense UI would not exist without some very iffy behaviour on the part of HTC.
Mobile computing seems to be turning into a real-world game of Risk. Apple currently has the US sown up thanks to national protectionism whilst Samsung has South Korea for the same reason and now India thanks to India's dislike of what it sees as US intellectual property rights Imperialism. Expect these two companies to be doing big deals with large public sector organisations around the globe over the next few years in an attempt to capture entire national markets in one fell swoop.
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